With Apple facing the barrel of a US Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust lawsuit, one might assume that references to the company’s existing anti-competitive tailwinds from Cupertino in Europe would be peppered throughout the DOJ complaint — just for a little extra context and moral support, if nothing else. But Europe is barely mentioned.
The first time Europe is explicitly mentioned, however, is in relation to Apple’s hold on digital wallets, NFC and mobile payment technology in its iOS ecosystem.
For context, the EU filed charges against Apple in May 2022, concluding that Apple “abused its dominant position” in mobile wallets by preventing rival services from accessing the iPhone’s NFC contactless payment feature. Earlier this year, Apple went some way to placating European regulators by proposing to allow third parties to access mobile wallets and third-party payment services without a NFC charge on iOS, bypassing its own payment and wallet services. of Apple. With those changes now in motion, in theory at least, the Justice Department wants in on the action.
In a complaint filed in the US District Court of New Jersey, the Justice Department agreed with the EU’s claim that Apple unfairly favors its own mobile payment technology, giving third-party developers little choice but to play ball. Specifically, it says Apple’s “absolute control” over tap-to-pay transactions stifles innovation and strengthens its existing monopoly.
Deposit Notes:
There is no technical limitation to providing NFC access to developers who want to offer third-party wallets. For example, Apple allows merchants to use the iPhone’s NFC antenna to accept payments from consumers. Apple also recognizes that it is technically possible to allow an iPhone user to set another application (eg, a bank application) as the default payment application, and Apple intends to enable this functionality in Europe.
This lone report in Europe tells us something about the differences between two jurisdictions trying to keep a major platform controller under control.
Categories
The Justice Department’s complaint about digital wallets is part of a focus on five broad categories. One of them is “super apps,” which the Justice Department says Apple has blocked because they are “fundamentally disruptive” to Apple’s app ecosystem, since they would allow developers to introduce multiple features and mini-programs to a single application.
Then there’s cross-platform smartwatch compatibility, which the DOJ says Apple is hindering by restricting certain features from third-party smartwatch makers. And cross-platform messaging has also earned a spot on the complaint list, with the Justice Department arguing that Apple is “protecting the smartphone monopoly” by making iMessage iOS-only, while also downgrading other cross-platform messaging apps that are available. He also mentioned the different colored “bubbles” that iMessage sends depending on whether the recipient is on iOS or Android.
It’s worth noting here that while Europe considered forcing Apple to make iMessage interoperable with other third-party messaging apps, it decided against it.
Elsewhere, the Justice Department also accuses Apple of preventing developers from offering gaming apps in the cloud, as that would mean developers could create games that don’t require powerful hardware like the iPhone, rather than using remote servers to make stream games to a device. — while bundling multiple games into one downloadable app.
Apple even announced back in January that would allow game streaming services like Xbox Cloud on iPhones, but the Justice Department says Apple still makes it too burdensome for developers who want to monetize their games, for example by requiring them to use their own system Apple payments and specifically requiring iPhone design revisions. The complaint states:
Apple’s rules and restrictions essentially force developers to create a separate version of their app specifically for iOS instead of creating a single cloud-based version that is compatible with multiple operating systems, including iOS. As a result, developers spend significant time and resources to re-engineer apps to bring cross-platform apps like multiplayer games to the iPhone.
A notable omission from the DOJ’s list of complaints is that of anti-addressing practices, for which Apple was recently fined €1.84 billion in Europe — basically, Apple would prevent iOS app developers from telling their users about cheaper ways to sign up for their service (such as through a website). Spotify has been lobbying against this practice for a long time and is currently testing the durability of Europe’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA), which has anti-direction provisions.
So while there is clearly some overlap in the issues the DOJ and Europe are trying to address regarding Apple’s alleged antitrust and anticompetitive practices, there are also notable divergences in their specific areas of focus. However, NFC, digital wallets and mobile payments are where they seem to be most settled.
